


untangling

by unchosenone



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caleb Widogast is Tired, Episode Tag, Humor, Multi, Nott the Brave is a devoted wingman who doesn’t know who to wingman for, POV Caleb Widogast, episode 85, it’s a wingman conflict of interest, most canon ships referenced but nothing confirmed, really everybody mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:27:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21517687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unchosenone/pseuds/unchosenone
Summary: Nott promised Beau she wouldn’t speak a word of her crush, which is why she has to immediately go tell Caleb all about it. For the advice, of course; definitely not for the gossip.Caleb really just wanted to learn some spells.
Relationships: Nott & Caleb Widogast, referenced Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett, referenced Jester Lavorre/Fjord
Comments: 13
Kudos: 149





	untangling

**Author's Note:**

> this was impulse written after episode 85, so we’re just casually ignoring all the major plot things that are going on and all the major changes that could prevent this conversation from ever happening, and pretending the mighty nine are in some vague afternoon of downtime

Nott inches into the room as he’s transcribing spells. If it weren’t for the slosh of the flash on her hip Caleb wouldn’t have noticed, too enthralled in his work. The others went out for some quick errands, and he had thought she went with them.

Caleb looks up, brows wrinkled in silent question. He told them all he’d need hours to finish this, and he can’t imagine watching him painstakingly test and learn and copy spells piecemeal from a scroll to a book is especially interesting, even for an amateur student of the arcane.

Nott’s face is furrowed in anxiety—not exactly a rare expression, but he tilts his head worriedly nonetheless.

“Nott? Are you alright?”

“Caleb,” she answers immediately, like she had a monologue prepared and was just waiting for her cue. “If I told you something that’s definitely supposed to be a secret, would you never tell anyone I told you? And, like, never tell anyone about it at all, but _definitely_ never tell anyone that _I_ was the one who told you.”

“Why would you tell me something that is supposed to be kept a secret?”

“Well, I promised I would keep it a secret and not tell anyone, but now I _really_ want to tell someone.”

Caleb relaxes by increment. It doesn’t sound like he need be concerned; if it were important, she would have just told him.

He re-dips his pen in the ink bottle and sets back to work. “If you promised to keep it a secret, then I think you should—”

“Beau has a crush on Jester!” Nott bursts out.

Caleb looks up at her. She’s certain of this, speaking from knowledge instead of a guess. 

“Oh.” He considers for a moment, nods to himself, and then turns back to the paper. “That makes sense.”

“Does it!? It _does_? What—” There’s a _taptaptap_ sound as Nott scurries up right against the opposite side of his desk. “ _What do you know_?”

“I don’t know anything!” Caleb says, hands jerking as his ink threatens to tip over. It doesn’t, thankfully, and he gently lowers them. “I just said that it makes sense. I mean, Jester is very strong—”

“Beau does like buff ladies,” Nott agrees.

“And they do, you know, like spending time together, and have fun together.”

“They _do_ ,” she muses, nodding. Then her eyes widen at him. “Wait, do you think Jester likes Beau too!?”

“I do not know.” Also, he would really like to get back to transcribing.

Nott leans onto the corner of the desk, oblivious to his wishes, and hums. “Because _I_ thought that Jester likes Fjord, not Beau.”

Maybe if he lets her get it all out without encouraging her too much, this will be quick.

“Jester did like Fjord,” Caleb agrees placidly, reading over the scroll again to remind himself what he was about to transcribe.

“Yeah, so—Wait, _did_? Did!? Do you mean she doesn’t now? Do you know something?”

“ _No_.” It comes out a little too loud in his pressure-driven agitation. Caleb takes a deep breath. “I am just—I am stating a fact. Jester did like Fjord. She is—she is not very subtle! We all know this.”

“But you think she might not anymore,” Nott extrapolates, narrowing her eyes.

“I have no thoughts on the subject,” Caleb insists. He was supposed be starting four uninterrupted hours of arcane discovery right now. _Uninterrupted_ hours. He was not supposed to be theorizing about his friends’ love lives.

“So you _know_ something.” Nott leans across the table towards him in an accusing stance, like she and Jester have just caught a suspect in one of their “cases”.

“I don’t!”

“What do you know!?” Nott shrieks.

“I don’t know anything!”

Nott narrows her eyes even further to tiny slits, leans in extra close, and then draws back with theatrical suspicion. “Alright…” He half-expects her to start dropping treason accusations.

Caleb’s eyes stray to his paper again, where he is dismayed to find scattered droplets of ink from his pen. Ah, well. He already stuttered on the last rune; this sheet was likely to become scrap paper anyway. Nonetheless, he frowns as he pushes it off to the side.

“Well?” Nott prompts, just as he dares hope he might get back to work.

“Well what?”

“What do you think I should do?”

Caleb wrinkles his brows. “Why would you do anything?”

“ _Because_ , Caleb, I promised Beau that I would do some work for her to suss out the sitch’, but I’ve also spent this _whole_ time trying to do work for Jester to get _Fjord_ to notice her.” Widened like this, her eyes seem to overtake her entire face.

“Did Beauregard actually ask you do this ‘work’ for her?” Caleb asks, suspicious.

Nott makes a dismissive sound. “She _said_ she didn’t, but I think it was secretly a cry for my help.”

“I have met Beauregard, and I think if she told you not to, eh, ‘suss out the sitch’ on her behalf, she probably meant it.”

“That’s just what she wants you to think,” says Nott.

“I—Ja. Yes. It _is_ what she wants.”

“Exactly.” Nott winks.

Caleb gives up.

“So do I make Fjord fall in love with Jester, or do I make Jester fall in love with Beau?”

“I do not think you should do either,” Caleb says, assuming it will be ignored.

“You’re right. I need to gather more information first. I mean, we don’t even know if Jester likes girls at all.”

“We don’t,” Caleb says, even though he would really like to go back to the part of the conversation where this became a “we” and change it to be as far from that as possible. He reluctantly admits to himself that no work is getting done, and finally sets his pen down with a sigh.

“Do _you_ think Jester likes girls?”

“I have never thought about it,” Caleb tells her honestly. He barges on quickly before she can send them in circles again, “And I do not know anything either. I promise that you know far more about this than I do.”

Nott grimaces, perhaps at the missed opportunity to accuse him of secret friendship crimes. “Well, not anymore. I pretty much just told you all of it.”

“Right.”

“I mean, Jester _could_ like girls. We don’t know anything to say she doesn’t.” She shoots a suspicious look at Caleb at this statement, and he quickly nods in agreement. “Girls clearly like her.”

Caleb continues nodding, because agreement seems to be the best option here. “Ja, Jester is very fun. I’m sure many people like her.”

Nott slams her hands on the table, face suddenly looming right in front of his. “What does that mean? Do you like Jester too!?”

Caleb really needs to stop agreeing. It is a terrible option here.

“I do not like Jester,” he says, bringing up his hands to remove her, and then hesitating because he doesn’t like touching people’s faces. “I mean, I _do_ like Jester, just not like that.”

“Hmm.”

“Nott the Brave,” Caleb says, hands still hovering, “would you please…”

She pulls back. “Alright. You don’t have any secret crushes.” Another sharp look. “You don’t have any secret crushes, right?”

“I don’t have any secret crushes.”

“You’re not secretly in love with me?”

“Only as my dearest friend, and it is not a secret.”

“Pff. Sap.”

“Do _you_ have any secret crushes?”

“I am a married woman, Caleb!”

“You can still have a crush,” he pushes, intent on teasing her back. “Are you sure you are not harboring hidden feelings for—” He casts around for who would irritate Nott the most. “For Fjord? Hm? Perhaps that is the true reason you are so intent on this.”

Nott scoffs loudly. “Fjord _wishes_ he could get with me—What?” she adds, catching sight of his expression. “What are you smiling about?”

Caleb looks down to hide it, then realizes he doesn’t have to. “Nothing. It’s just nice to see you confident.”

Nott scoffs again, but it’s softer, and he thinks she’s secretly pleased.

“Though, you know, I think it’s probably good that we don’t have secret crushes, because things are already complicated enough,” she says. “I mean, Jester has a crush on Fjord. Beau has a crush on Jester. And Beau is _also_ into Yasha—Is? Was? Do we think she’s still into Yasha?”

Caleb shrugs.

“You’re right; it’s a moot point right now anyway. And Yasha had a secret wife! And I have a husband!”

“A secret husband,” Caleb adds.

“A _secret_ husband! And you have a long lost—”

“It’s okay if we don’t talk about me.”

“Alright. And Fjord is shockingly not a virgin! And he had sex with Avantica, who Beau _also_ thought was hot. Actually, maybe Beau just thinks a lot of people are hot. I mean, Keg, Reani; that girl gets around. And Caduceus—”

Nott pauses. They both think for a second.

“I guess Caduceus doesn’t have anything going on.”

She sighs, and hoists herself onto the corner of the desk before flopping down on her back. Caleb snatches up the ink just in time to keep it from spilling.

“It is quite a tangled web,” he says, setting the bottle down closer to himself once she’s settled.

“Yeah…”

Nott falls silent, and Caleb takes the opportunity to practice the next few symbols on his newly dubbed scratch paper.

“You know,” Nott pipes up after a minute. “Jester _is_ strong, but I don’t think Beau actually mentioned her muscles even once when we were talking. I mean, I’ve heard her talk about Yasha’s arms a _lot_ , but nothin’ here. Not even for Jester’s biceps.”

“Are they impressive biceps?” An arc here, a sharp line there…

“Oh, yeah. You should’ve seen us getting tattoos. Those things are poppin’.”

Clabe smiles down at his swirling runes. Once Nott leaves, he thinks he’ll be able to transcribe the whole first line onto a fresh sheet of paper without issue.

“Do you think,” Nott says, “that Beau might be, like, in _love_ with Jester?”

“Love?”

“Yeah. Like. She just talked all about how cool and funny Jester is. Like, ‘ooh, I’m so in love with her so much because she makes me laugh, and she’s so complex.’ She said that. That she likes Jester’s _complexities_.”

“Did she say ‘in love’?”

“Well, no. But I’m extrapolating.”

“Ah.”

“But do you think she is?”

Caleb considers, pen hovering over the page. He would like to say no, of course not; Beau is too cynical to fall in love, and too realistic to do it with someone in their unsteady little group. Surely this is just another bought of attraction that will die out when she finds her next hook-up. But as has been his refrain the entire conversation…

“I do not know. I suppose it’s possible.”

“Hmph. I just—I’ve just been trying _so hard_ to get Jester and Fjord together.”

“I know.”

“Because I want my friends to be happy!”

“I know, Nott the Brave.”

“But now maybe I’m going to break Beau’s heart!”

Caleb lets this settle in silence. Nott seems to be working through things herself as much as she’s talking to him.

“I gotta figure out if Jester likes Beau. Or girls. I gotta figure out if Jester still likes _Fjord_. And if Fjord likes Jester now.”

Caleb gives a light hum to indicate he’s listening, dipping his pen again.

“Which one do you think I should suss out first?”

“I think you should suss out neither,” Caleb says, before he makes the mistake of looking up and meeting her big, goblin, puppy-dog eyes. Laying sideways across the table, just ahead of his work, puts her close enough to give him the full force of the look without intruding too much on his space. Caleb knows most would never find a goblin face endearing, but he likes Nott too much to be immune to it.

He sighs deeply. “I suppose if you _must_ meddle…Jester is in the middle of it, ja? So if you find out how she feels, that would settle the whole thing.”

“Yesss. You’re right!” Nott sits up, grinning.

“But,” he adds quickly, suddenly wary of what he might have unleashed, “you shouldn’t say anything to betray Beauregard’s confidence, ja?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” She hops off the table, flapping at hand at him without looking.

“Nott! You promised to keep her secrets, ja? You cannot betray them to Jester. Or Jester’s to Fjord!”

“Oh, don’t you worry, Caleb,” Nott says, catching and hanging on the doorframe with a grin. “I will be _pre-tty_ sneaky about this. I am _extremely_ good at social manipulation.”

“Perhaps you should not—” Caleb starts, alarmed, but Nott is already out the door.

Ah. Well then.

He stares after her for a few seconds. This can only end poorly: Nott’s lack of social subtleties, intentionally stirring the pot of her friend’s fragile emotions, the number of close friendships involved… He should go to stop her.

Though, really, what would he do? Running after Nott now would only draw suspicion from the others. He certainly cannot watch over her at all moments of the day. And he isn’t supposed to know what she has told him at all. _Two_ people pushing on the issue would just be more suspicious.

Really, if he thinks about it, the best thing for him to do is act completely normal and return to his transcriptions. That this is also what he wants to do is purely coincidence.

Caleb cheerfully rearranges his papers into perfectly lines, and taps the excess ink off his pen.

He’s sure they’ll figure it out.


End file.
